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A world famous conductor is found dead in his dressing room between acts in La Traviata. Venice is horrified. What damage will this do to the city’s reputation? And that of its great opera house, La Fenice?

The opening of Donna Leon’s first Commissario Brunetti crime novel was to set the pattern for her 30 year love affair with the thoughtful Venetian detective – a relationship shared with multiple millions of readers throughout the world in the series of prize-winning novels that followed.

Now a two-part drama based on that first Brunetti book, Death at La Fenice, has been commissioned by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 with a top-line cast including Julian Rhind Tutt as Brunetti, Jeany Spark as Paola, his wife and co-conspirator, and Siobhan Redmond as the well-connected Contessa Falier.

Rather than the stereotypical troubled cop with a dark past and a bleak future, Guido Brunetti is a man full of love – for Paola, his teenage children, local food, the Greek classics and, at the root of it all Venice, La Serenissima. For Venice is as much a character in the Leon books as Brunetti himself. In this new adaptation, every scene evokes a location in the beautiful, sinking city.

COMMISSARIO GUIDO BRUNETTI - Julian Rhind-Tutt
SERGEANT LORENZO VIANELLO - Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong
VICE-QUESTORE GIUSEPPE PATTA/REZZONICO - David Horovitch
DR ETTORE RIZZARDI/SIGNOR ECHEVESTE - Clive Hayward
PAOLA FALIER - Jeany Spark
CONTESSA FALIER/FLAVIA PETRELLI - Siobhan Redmond
ELIZABETH WELLAUER/BRETT LYNCH/CARLOTTA - Jane Slavin
AMADEO FASINI - Hugh Ross
NUN - Susan Jameson

Dramatised by D J Britton from the novel by Donna Leon
Music by Julie Cooper
Produced and directed by Eoin O'Callaghan

A Big Fish Radio production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4